Perfect Ruin (6 page)

“I’d love to,” he says. “I don’t have to be home to watch Leland. My mother is taking him to get fitted for a new uniform.”

“Don’t tell me he managed to lose an entire uniform,” I say. Basil’s brother is famous for losing things. It’s a wonder he still has his betrothal band on a chain around his neck.

“He didn’t lose it, exactly. He’s pretty sure it’s at the bottom of the lake. Part of it, anyway.”

Even Pen looks up from her notes at that.

“He was trying to use the pant legs as a net to catch fish.” Basil sighs. “These are the sorts of things that happen when I take my eyes off him for five minutes.”

I laugh. “Poor Basil,” I say. “The great fun in being a younger sibling is getting to torture the older.”

“You were an uncorrupted compared to Leland,” Basil says.

“What about the time we were seven and we tried to bake a cake?” I say.

“I don’t recall any baking,” Basil says. “I recall cracked eggs on the floor and a sack of flour that was too heavy for you to carry.”

“That mess happened on Lex’s watch,” I remind him. “He’s the one who had to clean it up.”

Now Basil is chuckling with his lips pressed together. He’s looking at me.

“What?” I say.

“I’m just remembering all the flour in your hair.”

“It got up my nose. I couldn’t stop sneezing.”

We’re both trying to quiet our laughter so as not to disrupt the solemn mood of the train.

“Is this what passes for romance between you two?” Pen says.

“Yes,” I say. “And we like it this way, don’t we, Basil?”

“Quite,” he says.

The evening sun catches every bolt and scrap of metal on the train, and for an instant we are suspended in an atmosphere of stars.

My mother is of course thrilled that my betrothed is joining us for dinner. Not only does she find him charming, but she is also eager for a sense of normalcy. Though the ash from the fire at the flower shop has long since disappeared, a grayness still blankets the city. I’ve never known anything like it, but something about my mother’s despondency of late tells me she knows it well.

My father’s absence at the table doesn’t help.

I force myself to eat everything on the plate, despite the lingering dread in my stomach after my interview with the specialist, which I leave out of the dinner conversation.

After we’ve cleared our plates, I say I’m feeling tired and I’m going to lie down, and I pull Basil toward my bedroom.

“Did you take your pill this morning, love?” my mother asks.

I feel my cheeks burning. “Yes,” I say, and I can’t meet Basil’s eyes. I’ve been taking my sterility pill since about the time my betrothal band started to fit on my finger. I know my mother doesn’t want for me to repeat Alice’s mistake, and I’ve heard it isn’t uncommon for girls my age to be intimate with their betrotheds, but the idea still embarrasses me.

When I close my bedroom door, I sag against it with a deflating sigh.

Basil sits on the edge of my bed and holds his arms out to me. “Come here,” he says, and when I take his hands, he pulls me down to sit beside him.

“Today was awful,” I confess, making a little game of rolling and unrolling his red necktie. “In just a few days, I feel as though everything has changed.”

“I keep thinking it’ll all go back to normal,” he says. “Each morning I wake up and tell myself there won’t be a patrolman at the door when I leave. They’ll have found the murderer. The fire will turn out to have been an accident.”

We sit without speaking for a while, me staring at my lap, as the sunset makes everything orange.

“You can tell me anything, you know,” Basil says.

He knows something is wrong, then. He’s an excellent reader of people, and I am terrible at hiding things. Another reason we’re probably a good match—he keeps me from getting lost in myself. And I always relent, telling him the little things, like my fear of giving verbal presentations before the class, or that I don’t like his mother’s walnut cookies—which she gives me every year for my festival of stars gift—as much as I let on. But how can I tell him that I fear I’m becoming like my brother, or that I have perhaps always been like him? That for all of last night I dreamed of Internment’s edge, Amy scattering pages into the clouds, and a fire raging behind her so that she had no choice but to jump?

I think of the specialist’s card in my pocket.

“Basil?” I say. “You want me to be safe, don’t you?”

He puts his hand over mine, and his tie unrolls from my fingers. “Of course,” he says.

I can’t tell him, then. If he knew that I was this curious about the edge, he would drag me to the king’s home atop the clock tower himself. He would ask to have me declared irrational, and I’d be fitted with an anklet made of blinking lights and never be allowed to step outside again. Just like the woman who used to live downstairs. I used to pass by her door and see her sometimes, standing just inside her threshold after her husband left for work. I’d hear the whimpers of pain when she tried to follow after him.

“What is it?” he asks.

I’m trying to think of a way to answer without lying, but then I’m saved by a knock on my door. “A patrolman was just here.” My mother’s voice. “There’s going to be a broadcast. They’ve found that poor girl’s murderer.”

T
HE BUILDING IS SHAKING, FOR ALL THE footsteps fighting to get down the stairwells at once. Our fascination is as great as our horror, as though knowing the name of the person responsible will explain what has been done. As though it will bring us peace.

I hold Basil’s hand, and when we make it downstairs, the broadcast room contains what I’m certain is everyone in the apartment complex.

Even my brother, who never comes down for these. I spot him standing along the wall with Alice. He’s most comfortable when he can be near a wall or sitting on the floor; he’s told me it’s the only way he can keep from feeling like he’s falling through the sky. In the first months, when he was still adjusting to the permanent darkness, he used to crawl.

Alice waves us over.

“They found the murderer?” Basil asks.

“That’s what we’ve heard, too,” Alice says.

Lex mumbles something I don’t catch. I touch his arm, to let him know where I am and to console him before he starts to get angry. He has never had a kind thing to say about the king, or his announcements. Especially since Alice’s ordeal. He could get us all arrested for treason.

I stand on tiptoes to reach his ear. “It’ll be okay,” I say.

“It’s already plenty not-okay, Little Sister,” he says.

Alice shushes him. A patrolman is shaking the screen, trying to get it to work. There are a few seconds of static, and then the king appears, wobbly and distorted on the screen.

Everyone in the room has gone quiet. When the roar of the static reduces itself to a faint crackling, we can finally hear what the king is saying. “—are appalled by our findings early this evening that after a thorough investigation, based on extensive evidence, there is reason to believe that Judas Hensley is responsible for the murder of Daphne Leander, his betrothed.”

My blood runs cold. Basil squeezes my hand.

“No,” Lex murmurs beside me.

Rather than an academy image, there’s live footage of the accused, his arms shackled behind him, his head down, and his face half-covered by blond hair as he’s lead up the steps of the courthouse by several patrolmen. I’m uncertain what awaits him on the other side of those heavy wooden doors. Many generations before I was born, crimes were a routine part of Internment. Jealousy and greed bred most of them, and it was determined that arranged betrothals and assigned housing would diminish many such crimes. Things will never be perfect, of course. With free will comes inevitable error and misjudgment. There are still disputes and accidents that are resolved in the courthouse. If it’s an involved case, people are selected to serve as part of a jury.

But a murderer? What sort of trial would have to take place? Where would they keep him in the meantime?

Alice has her finger to Lex’s lips now, because he just said something I didn’t hear. What could this possibly mean to him? In the last moment before the image switches back to the king, I see Judas Hensley in the courthouse lights. I’ve seen him at the academy; we’ve had classes together, but I don’t think we’ve ever spoken.

“Do you know him?” I ask Basil.

“I’ve seen him,” he says.

The king is still speaking, telling us there will be more updates to follow, but I’m distracted by Alice, who is pulling Lex out of the room and trying not to make a scene. I don’t understand why he’s so upset by this. What does he have to do with a murdered girl’s betrothed from the academy?

The broadcast ends, and the room reaches a crescendo of chatter. Lots of speculation, but no answers among the lot of us.

All night, my dreams are pervaded by my brother’s furious pacing overhead. I fear the floorboards will splinter and break.

The cafeteria is filled with morbid, fascinated gossip. Judas is the name of a hero in the history book. The right-hand man to the king, he penned the first page of
The History of Internment
. The sky god favored him, and when Judas died, Internment experienced its one and only water storm. To think a boy named after Judas could commit such a crime.

Pen pulls excitedly on my sleeve. “It’s all like a tawdry romantic horror,” she says. “Can you even believe it?”

It’s all anyone in the cafeteria is talking about. I know because I overhear pieces of conversation—“Did anyone know them?”—“always a little strange”—“pretty girl”—“stuck up, if you ask me.” But I don’t find myself among them. I’m not interested in the gossip. I’m more worried about the aftermath.

“Wonder when the trial will begin,” Basil says.

“They’ll have a difficult time finding a jury, I imagine,” Thomas says. “It’s supposed to be unbiased. Who can be unbiased about murder? It’s clearly wrong.”

“Unless he didn’t do it,” I blurt, surprising myself. Everyone’s eyes are on me. “I mean—that’s what the trial is for, isn’t it? To determine innocence?”

Pen shrugs. “Guess we’ll see. Is there a math exam this week?”

And the topic of Daphne Leander and Judas Hensley dies away.

“Lex?”

“What is it?” he says after a pause. I knocked, but he won’t open his office door to me. Lost in his brilliance, I suppose. He was always like that—going off by himself. But his blindness has intensified it.

“I wanted to talk to you,” I say.

“Talk about what?”

“Things,” I say. “That’s what sisters do. You know, because you’re my brother and I care about you?”

“You bug me,” he says. “That’s what sisters do. How do you know I’m not trying to nap?”

“You aren’t,” I press. “The ceiling is practically crumbling over my bedroom.”

He ignores me. Alice, standing at the end of the hall, frowns in apology. Lex has even begun to elude her. I worry for him, alone in all that blackness.

I sit on the floor and lean against the door.

“Who was that little girl at your jumper group?” I ask. “She had a bow in her hair.” Too late, I realize a physical description won’t do my brother any good. “She can’t be more than eleven or twelve.”

No answer.

“The day of the fire, I caught her putting up papers in the ladies’ room at the theater. I think she put them up at the academy, too. They were copies of a paper Daphne Leander wrote about the gods being a myth.”

The door opens, and I tense to keep from falling backward. Lex reaches out for me.

“Where are you?” he says.

“Down here.” I hold up my hand and he takes it, feeling his way until he’s on his knees across from me.

“That girl is none of your concern,” he says.

“Is she really a jumper?” I say.

“Yes. And you have no business talking to her.”

“She’s Daphne Leander’s sister,” I say. “Isn’t she?”

“I’m not kidding, Morgan. You stay away from her.”

He’s in a miserable mood, and there’s no sense pressing him for more, but all he’s done is pique my interest.

“Since you’re out, come on and eat something,” Alice says. “I made berry cobbler.”

Later, when Lex has retreated to his office once again, Alice is washing the dishes and I’m drying them.

“He is right,” she says. “It’s best if you stay away from that girl.”

“Who is she?” I say. Alice takes her husband’s side about most things, but she’s always had a soft spot for me.

“You were right,” she says, handing me a dripping plate. “She’s Daphne’s sister. She may be a little girl, but she’s got a lot of demons. It’s best if you let her alone.”

I’ve heard that saying used to describe my brother. “A lot of demons.” That’s what my father said while we all kept vigil at Lex’s bedside in the hospital. I didn’t know what he meant. But now I’m thinking of Amy Leander, and what it must have been like to learn her sister wouldn’t be coming home. It was the most awful thing I could imagine, watching my brother fight to breathe in that sterile room. But at least he
was
breathing.

Alice starts talking about frivolous things—greenhouse vegetation and silver earrings in jewelry shop windows that she thinks will make my eyes sparkle—and I play along, but she isn’t fooling me. There’s something happening to Internment. That’s as certain as Daphne Leander is dead.

B
ASIL THROWS A STONE INTO THE LAKE, trying to make it skip.

“Like this,” I say, pitching the stone into the water at an angle. It hits the surface and promptly sinks. Basil tries not to laugh.

“Well, I was good at it when I was little, anyway.” I fall back into the grass and watch a cloud that’s sloping over the atmosphere.

“Our engineers spend so much time studying the ground,” Basil says, settling beside me. “Ever think about what’s above us?”

“The tributary,” I say. “The god of the sky.”

“But those are intangible,” Basil says. “Spiritual. What I mean is, what if there’s more land up there? What if there are people living on the stars?”

“I’ve never thought about that,” I say, and suddenly I feel overwhelmed by how much there is to know, and how much I will never live to figure out.

In the distance, there are patrolmen sitting in the gazebo, trying not to seem as though they are watching. I can no longer tell if they’re trying to protect us, or if they’re suspicious of us.

Basil tilts his head against mine. From a distance, we’re just another young couple lazing about in the park after class.

“You aren’t crazy,” he says.

“What?”

“I’ve known you all your life, and you’ve always tried to hide the parts of yourself that you think are wrong. But nothing is wrong with you.”

Those may be the best words he’s ever said to me. I mutter “Thank you” but it doesn’t feel adequate.

I don’t tell him about the card Ms. Harlan gave me, and I don’t tell him that I’m beginning to think I need her help.

Don’t focus on the edge,
I tell myself. Stay inside the tracks. Stay in this little place where awful things happen, but where beauty hides in beams of sunlight, in the green grass and the gentle lapping of the lake forming and destroying watery shapes. Ignore the men in uniforms that stand at length, sullying the image. They’ll be gone soon. Everything will go back to normal.

On Friday, Lex doesn’t go to his jumper group. Instead, there’s a cavalcade of footsteps above our common room, rattling the hanging light.

It sounds as though they’re having a party upstairs, but that can’t be right. Lex would never allow something like that. I’d like to ask my mother about it, but she’s asleep, which is something that happens more and more lately with the prescription she’s taking. I don’t tell Lex; he’s opposed to all the pharmaceuticals, even the mildest ones. But she’ll often be asleep when I get home, and then late into the night, I’ll hear my bedroom door creaking open as she checks in to be sure I’m safe. I pretend to be asleep when this happens. I have to seem unburdened. After all that has happened with Lex, I can’t give my parents cause to worry about me.

When I can take the stomping no more, I head upstairs and knock on the door. Alice opens it just as far as the chain latch will allow. She never uses the chain latch.

“Morgan.” She blinks. “Is everything okay?”

I try to see behind her, but whatever’s happening is in another room. I can smell something baking—apple pie, I think. “Are you having a party?” I ask.

“We can’t get into the courthouse until the trial’s been had,” Alice says. “So Lex is having his group here this week. I’m sorry, love. I can’t let you in. I’ve been stuck in the kitchen myself. Come back later and we’ll have some desserts, if they haven’t eaten everything in the cold box.”

She closes the door before I can get in so much as a word.

The door opens again just as I reach the stairs. “Morgan,” Alice calls, and I spin around, hopeful. She hands me an envelope. “Would you mind dropping this in the message bin for me?”

I don’t have to read the envelope to know what it says:

Clock Tower

Medicinal Affairs

Every week she fills out a mandated report of the pharmaceuticals she and Lex pretend to be taking, and orders more to keep from arousing suspicions.

I drop the envelope in the tall metal bin outside the apartment. In the morning a messenger on a bicycle will retrieve the envelopes and take them where they need to go. A messenger comes in the afternoon and evening too, but never this late.

I’m too restless to go home; the thought of listening to clocks ticking until I fall asleep is unbearable. Pen won’t be able to leave; her parents don’t let her out after dark since the fire happened, even if it’s just upstairs to my apartment. She’s their only child and her mother is particularly protective. Though, as Pen says, her mother’s protectiveness is subject to her whims and sobriety.

It isn’t late, and Basil will go for a walk with me. He might be a little unhappy to know I traveled to his section by myself, but the murderer, also suspected to be the arsonist, has been caught and there are still patrolmen at every turn.

A patrolman opens the front door for me. “Be safe out there tonight,” he says. It’s a phrase that’s starting to lose meaning now.

But somewhere out there, my father is saying the same thing, over and over. I wonder if he believes any of us are safe now.

Outside, warm lantern light greets me. The sky is smeared with stars like the glitter over Daphne’s eyes in her class image. I don’t know why this makes me feel at peace. Like everything is connected in some way, that humans are just that, whether they’re on the ground or in the sky, and that we all belong to the same greater something.

I gave a lot of thought to the gods when I thought my brother was dying. Pen says people get the most spiritual when things are at their worst. She was right about that. I wondered about the atmosphere that keeps us contained on Internment, and when my brother reached the edge, I wondered if the sky god felt betrayed. I wondered if the god of the earth had called out a temptation and set it on the wind. In the texts, we’re taught that it’s a hypnotic melody.

If Lex were to die, I wondered what would become of our family then.

I try not to dwell on it anymore. He lived. I don’t have the answers and it would be ungrateful of me to ask for them.

It’s a beautiful night; a bit colder, as the short seasons tend to be, but I don’t mind. It’s a short walk to Basil’s section, and I’ll pass the lake on the way. There will be patrolmen, inevitably, but if I’m lucky, they won’t send me back home. Now that the murderer has been caught, things are starting to relax. Or so the king would like us to believe.

There are fewer patrolmen than I expected. They stand guard outside apartment buildings and on certain corners, but then I see none for several blocks.

The lake is serene.

It casts a flawless reflection of the stars, as though it isn’t a lake at all, but a hole in the city itself. Lex and Alice used to take me here when I was small. They taught me how to swim in the shallows, and how to stand very still so that the trout would flutter up against me. I have a memory for every part of this city. With the exception of the sections accessible only to workers, I’ve been everywhere.

The stillness is broken by something rustling in the shrubs that outline the park. In the darkness just beyond the street lanterns, I see what looks like a figure hurtling toward me. Whatever it is, it brings the sound of more footsteps approaching, voices shouting, “This way!” and “You cover that area!”

If I can hardly make out the figure, it definitely can’t see me in the darkness, because in the next instant, it crashes into me and we grab each other to steady ourselves. There’s heavy breathing and the smell of sweat and possibly tears.

In the starlight, I can just barely make out the person holding my wrists.

I’m staring right into the face of Judas Hensley.

The voices are getting closer, and I hear bodies breaking apart the shrubs. Of course they’re coming for him. He murdered his betrothed. Supposedly. Maybe not.

“Help,” he says softly.

I think he’s surprised by the way my fingers tighten around his forearms. “Quiet,” I say, and push him under the lake water.

He disappears under the surface immediately and without struggle.

I stoop down and gather a handful of pebbles, toss one into the rippling water just as a patrolman approaches.

“Are you alone here, miss?” he asks me, doubling over to catch his breath. It’s been a long time since the uniforms have had cause to run.

“Yes,” I say. “I saw someone run through here a while ago.” I point toward the cobbles. I toss another pebble into the lake to mask the ripples being caused by the body under the surface. “He seemed to be in an awful hurry. Has he done something wrong?”

“He was caught stealing, miss,” the patrolman says. “You shouldn’t be out this late alone.”

I’m not quick enough to come up with an excuse, but it’s no matter. He’s run off to chase the phantom thief, who is really no thief at all.

It isn’t a moment too soon, because Judas bursts from the surface of the water, spluttering. I offer a hand out to help him, but he stomps past me, his bare feet making squishing sounds in the mud. He moves into just the right beam of moonlight and I see that his eyes are swollen from tears. I have seen enough crying eyes to be certain.

This is the boy that’s got Internment so scared. He’s tall and lean, and his face is all sharp angles. He holds his chin up high. But I can’t bring myself to fear him. It’s the bleary eyes, I think.

He drops to the grass and huddles forward, and his shape protrudes through his wet shirt, the muscles moving as he takes in oxygen. Like some sort of machine. Like there are gears under his skin. He seems too exquisitely crafted to be all human.

Cautiously, I kneel beside him. “I’ve seen you,” I say.

“On the king’s broadcast?” he says bitterly.

“At the academy.” There are four academies and universities on Internment. “We’re in the same year.”

“We
were
,” he amends. “There’s not much of an education on my horizon now.” His jaw is trembling, and I wish that I had something to offer him for warmth.

I don’t see something deranged, like how the killer who went mad from tainted pharmaceuticals when my parents were children must have looked. I don’t see Daphne Leander’s murderer. Just a ragged shirt and water dripping from all the angles of his collarbone, moonlight darkening the notches of his throat. Just a boy.

“Your father is a patrolman,” he says. “Stockhour? Am I right?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I say, feeling oddly brave. It’s strange that he would know this about my father; if anything, most of my classmates know me for having a brother who’s a jumper. “Your hands are bleeding.”

He stares at his open palms, marred with bloody lines, and then he rubs them in the dirt. I wince.

“Why did you help me?” he says. “Don’t you know who I am? I could have killed you.”

“How? By wringing your wet hair out on me?” I say. “You need to get someplace warm before you catch a chill.”

“Don’t have that luxury,” he says, pushing himself to his feet. He has already begun to walk away when I start after him.

“Where are you going?” I say. He can’t be thinking of hiding. “There are patrolmen on almost every corner. At the doors of every building, for certain.”

He doesn’t answer, pushing through the shrubs and crossing into the small woods that encompass the park. The trees are mostly insubstantial, skinny things only as thick as arms.

Basil would never go for this—me chasing after an accused murderer in the darkness. He says there’s nothing wrong with me, but it’s entirely possible he hasn’t been paying enough attention.

“You aren’t thinking of jumping over the edge, are you?” I say, ducking a low branch as I keep several paces behind him. “That isn’t the answer, you know. It’s worse than suicide. My brother tried.”

For a while there’s only the sound of twigs cracking under our feet, and then Judas asks, “Does he regret it?”

“He went blind,” I say.

“But does he regret it? Has he said he wishes he could undo it?”

I stop walking. He moves a few steps ahead before he notices and turns to face me. I can see only his hair and one side of his face.

“No,” I say. “He wouldn’t tell me something like that. He doesn’t talk to me like he used to. It’s implied, though.” I’m not oblivious to the uncertainty in my voice, and Judas isn’t either. I can just make out his sad grin before he turns away and stomps onward. It’s amazing how little noise he makes for one with such angry footfalls.

I follow. I know where we are. When we were kids, Pen and I found a shallow cavern here made up of rocks and we turned it into our secret house. I ruined the game when I told Basil and he brought Thomas into it. It was a full day before she forgave me. The boys have forgotten about it, but Pen and I still go there sometimes.

“If you keep following me, I really will have to kill you,” Judas says.

“My father is a patrolman,” I say. “You were right about that. But if you kill me, it’ll be a week before he notices.” It’s been about that long since I’ve seen him.

The frail moonlight blurs and in the next instant a tree trunk is pressing into my spine and I can taste the blood and the dirt from Judas’s hand against my mouth.

He begins with the word, “Listen.”

I do. Listen to a heartbeat throbbing in my ears. The slight wind moving leaves gone silver all around. His heavy, grieving, shaking breaths that go toward and then around me like clouds to our atmosphere.

“Go back,” he says. “Go back home to your safe apartment high above the city, and forget that you saw me here.”

When he moves his hand away from my mouth, I’m not breathing. My arms are wrapped around the tree behind me and that’s the only reason I don’t fall forward when he moves away. There’s a sense that I am weightless, that if I let go, I’ll be carried on the wind of his strides and I’ll go wherever he goes. Something keeps me here, my eyes straining to see what I can of him as he leaves. But the image isn’t perfect. My memory of Judas Hensley will always be dark. It will always be moving away from me.